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27 July 2013

Cool for school

Stand by, fellow colour geeks, as a previously rare hue is back in basic bricks; Bright Light Yellow as it is named on BrickLink, but I personally prefer TLG's official name Cool Yellow. That sounds way cooooooler. Once again we have the Friends range to thank, and the great news is that you’ll get a lot of Cool Yellow basic bricks by buying just one set; 41005 Heartlake High, which went on sale today in the UK, and the US is this Thursday 1 August.

There are 41 Cool Yellow elements that come in the set, across these five parts:

Brick 1X2 | Element ID 6022083 | Design ID 3004

Quantity 4

Brick 1X4 | Element ID 6036232 | Design ID 3010

Quantity 17

Brick 1X1X5 | Element ID 6036239 | Design ID 2453

Quantity 4

Brick 1X2X5 | Element ID 6036236 | Design ID 2454

Quantity 8

Wall Element 1X6X5 | Element ID 6036235 | Design ID 59349

Quantity 8

Cool Yellow has been around since 2004’s Belville Fairy Tale theme and never wholly disappeared, as was the fate of other new colours around that time. It has appeared in Duplo in plate and brick form (as well as the usual weird and wonderful Duplo shapes) and we’ve recently seen it as a 1X2 tile in 3932 Andrea’s Rehearsal Stage. But most folk probably know it best as a colour used for blond hair and baguettes! A sprinkling of other specialist elements also appeared in Clikits, Cars and SpongeBob SquarePants over the last decade.

It did get used in ye olde standard bricks at first, albeit sparingly, which is nice news if you're interested in doing some serious building with it. In 2004, a Creator Value Pack oddly contained just one lone 2X4 brick in Cool Yellow, while 5877 Wedding Coach contained a generous four 1X10 bricks and 5963 The Princess and the Pea came with one whopping 4X12 brick. Also of note in those Belville sets are 1X4 arches and 1X4 tiles. 5941 Riding School also deserves a mention for having a SNOT bracket - part 2436 Angle Plate 1X2/1X4 - and it also has two large wacky modified bricks as a base for the model.

And speaking of bases for models wot ain't baseplates, another Friends release from today/1 August, 41006 Downtown Bakery, has one more Cool Yellow element for you; part 91405 Plate 16X16. So all these new additions to the existing Cool Yellow arsenal provide a fairly decent array for some MOCing in this colour.

Eh? MOCing in "girly" colours? Sydneysider Pete White Brick's creations certainly stopped me in my tracks when I was at Melbourne's huge Brickvention festival in January. Although this example is not Cool Yellow but Light Yellow, you get a fair idea of the wild creativity that can be let loose if you put some time and money into buying colours and specialist elements from previous girls' themes!

But exotic colours don't always need to make up the majority of your build, as you can see from Pete's many other creations by clicking his name above.

One of my favourite builders here in the UK is Yvonne Doyle, because she combines colours in such a graceful and pleasing fashion and I'm left wondering why I've not seen such combinations before. Surely I have - but then Yvonne has a touch of alchemy with her builds.

I gave Yvonne a bag of olive rories earlier this year after lucking upon them in a PAB wall. The first thing she did was to sit herself down and systematically attach a pile of differently coloured bricks to the olive ones. Then she looked at them.

So simple really and I'm sure many of you do it, but I never thought of trying out more than a couple of obvious combinations! So I thought I'd try it out with Cool Yellow in the hope some combinations may inspire you - hence the seemingly endless pictures throughout this post. Click any of them to view fullscreen and scroll through them that way for the full effect. (Apologies in advance for the blurry Dark Purple!)

It is a far from complete inventory of colour combinations, so try others yourself! Rather than exclude ones I thought hideous, I figured we all have different tastes and different things spark us off. For example I'd never have thought of combining Cool Yellow with Dark Blue [BL] / Earth Blue [TLG], but that's what they've done in the Heartlake High set and it works out very nicely! In fact I think all the 'Earth' colours suit it well. And I love it with Dark Bluish Grey. So let me know if you use it!

Friends has been a real win for broadening the palette, and snarfing up useful SNOT parts with each acquisition, at the same time. Of course, in the process, you DO end up with uncountable number of hairbrushes, bows, butterflies, ladybugs and whatnot, but hey... go stick a pink bow on your next growling monster, or give Luke Skywalker a sidearm-sized lipstick to use as a weapon, and glory in the irony.

Mmm, I do have an excess of accessories. I have not yet found a home for hairbrushes but I use the flowers, crockery and utensils in MOCs. And now 41006 offers them in Bright Light Orange [BL] / Flame Yellowish Orange [TLG]!

I really appreciate this blog entry as it recommended me to buy the 41005... Great set thus far, an excellent and recommendable parts pack too. Other elements include bright pink flower, dark blue 1x8 tile, etc... Also the Beach House has some of these cool yellow elements.